








Group. Plaster 


Wish 


ARCHIPENKO 


EXHIBITION 


UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 


SOCIETE ANONYME 


INTRODUCTION AND CATALOGUE BY 


CHRISTIAN BRINTON 


KINGORE GALLERY 
NEW YORK 
1924 





eated Woman. Marble 


INTRODUCTION 
ae 
CHRISTIAN BRINTON 


I] faut qu'une auvre d'art nous séduise et nous surprenne 


IKE Euphorion, it is from a fusion of the antique 
spirit and the spirit of questing modernism—the 
magic mating of Faust and Helen of Troy—that derives 
the plastic inspiration of Aleksandr Archipenko. Kiev, 
the gleaming blue, green, and gold domed city by the 
Dnyepr, was the birthplace, seven and thirty years since, 
of the artist whose mission has been courageously to 
extend the confines of contemporary sculpture. From 
his father the youthful Aleksandr Porfirievich inherited 
a taste for abstract research, much preferring the me- 
chanical and scientific preoccupations of workshop and 
laboratory to the modelling classes of the local art 
school. And yet, the earnest, aspiring lad was not fated 
to follow in the paternal footsteps. Three things turned 
his energies from science to the richer emotionalism of 
attistic endeavour. They were the mystic appeal of the 
great cathedral of Saint Sophia, with its shimmering 
frescoes in the ancient ikonic manner, the profuse read- 
ing of Leonid Andreyev and the current symbolist 
literature of the day, and the revolution of 1905, which 
left its stain of blood and butchery in the streets of his 
Geaitve City: 

An ardent individualist, and dowered with a restless 
inner dynamism that continually urges him toward fresh 
conquests, the young man remained but two years in 
Moscow, and'but two weeks at the Ecole des Beaux- 
rts,  Glis true preceptors were his memories of the 


luxuriant Slavo-orientalism of his beloved Ukraine, 
and the Louvre, where he pursued his studies inde- 
pendently of any specific master. The supreme periods 
of creative style, Egyptian, Assyrian, pre-Phidian 
Greek, and early Gothic, were the sovereign sources 
from which he drew inspiration. Ancient art, which 
sutvives by reason of its stylistic vitality, taught him to 
seek, through his own effort, a plastic synthesis in con- 
sonance with the spirit of his time. And alone in his 
modest Montparnasse studio, he proceeded to evolve 
attistic conceptions that became the sensation of a 
capital ever ready, like the Athenian, for some new 
thing. 

At first sympathetically disposed toward cubism, Archi- 
penko soon renounced a formula that to him seemed 
doctrinaire and deficient in emotional content. He pre- 
ferred to pursue his own pathway in fruitful isolation; 
and, whilst successive appearances at the Independants 
and the Salon d’Automne disclosed startling changes of 
theme, manner, and medium, he remained true to the 
inner logic of his development. He was merely moving 
toward a purely personal conception of visible form, 
an abstract, not an inventory, or an imitation of nature. 
This art is, in brief, what our Teutonic friends term reine 
Skulptur—a complete, organic plastic entity. 

His working models derided and even destroyed by his 
fellow students of the atelier Mercie, lampooned and 
caricatured in the press by Raoul Ponchon, Leonnec, and 
‘Abel Faivre, and his exhibition publicly execrated by the 
Patriarch of Venice, Aleksandr Archipenko has neverthe- 
less triumphed in full measure. Twenty-eight Conti- 
nental museums have honoured his art by purchase, and 
there have been held since the war alone, sixteen separate 
exhibitions of his sculpture and painting in as many dif- 
ferent European cities. 


The reasons for this spontaneous reaction to the art 
of Archipenko are not far to seek. They reside chiefly in 
his aspiring modernism. If the mercurial Marinetti is the 
literary fugelman of the modern spirit, and the protean 
Picasso its representative painter, Archipenko occupies 
a similar position in the province of sculpture. Each in 
his way is a convinced, and convincing protestant. 
And that against which this art in particular protests is 
that fixity of form which is the arch enemy of aesthetic 
progress. In these marbles, bronzes, terra-cottas, and 
catved wooden statuettes, in these essays in con- 
structivism, or negativism, these sculpto-paintings, and 
drawings in black and white or colour, you sense the 
ardent, unremitting effort to keep alive that same plastic 
principle which the creative artist must continually 
revitalize throughout the ages. 

The art of Archipenko in its definitive aspects is an 
art of pure, voluntary abstraction, assuming its own pre- 
ordained shapes, expressing its own specific concepts. 
Released from the terrestrial taint of realism and natural- 
ism, it is sufficient unto itself, a perfect embodiment 
of plastic absolutism. These slender, rhythmic figures 
and glowing reliefs live, indeed, in a world wherein the 
basic elements of line, form, movement, and colour have 
passed through a process of aesthetic sublimation, and 
have actually been born anew. Held in equilibrium by 
logically sustained laws, this art expresses for the first 
time relativity in the round. And above all is the mystic, 
stylistic vision of Aleksandr Archipenko essentially 
modern in aim and appeal. For, in the searching alchemy 
of his creative consciousness, the boy, Euphorion, has 
become a gleaming figure of shining sheet metal—the 
Eiserne Jungfrau. 


APROPOS 


OR Monsieur X. to say that he understands a work of 

art by intuition is about the same thing as though 
Monsieur X. were to claim that he understands Chinese 
by intuition. In either case intuition is scarcely sufficient. 
As to aft, it is more difficult, and requires longer study, 
than does the learning of Chinese. Art constantly changes 
in its exterior aspects, is continually adjusting itself to 
the spirit of the time and the personality of the artist. 
Because of these changes it is difficult for one century, 
for one generation even, to comprehend the artistic pro- 
duction of another century, or another generation. In 
most European galleries and museums it is possible to 
acquire a complete art education through being enabled 
to study, side by side, the works of the older men, and 
the works of the leaders of the modern movement. In 
America the role of protector and preceptor of modernism 
has been successfully assumed by the Societe Anonyme, 
whose activities are well known and highly esteemed 
abroad. The sympathies of the Societe Anonyme are ex- 
clusively educational and idealistic. The Societé devotes 
its energies to bringing before the public those artists 
who express the vision and aim of their time in new 
forms and fresh concepts. America should feel both proud 
and happy at having in its midst an organization that 
unselfishly devotes itself to a task at once so practical 


and so inspirational. 


RP wa 


Geile @ GilE, 


SCULPTURE 


Seated Torso. Bronze. 1909 
Fragment. Bronze. 1909 


3 Black Torso. Bronze. 1909 


IO 


EF 


zs) 


16 


ys 


18 


2 


2O 


Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 


Repose. Marble. 1909 
Stadtisches Museum, Essen 


White Torso. Marble. 1915 
Nationalgalerie, Berlin 


Standing Torso. Bronze. 1915 

Woman Dressing Her Hair. Bronze. 1915 
Statuette. Bronze. 1915 

Small Vase. Bronze. 1916 


Large Vase. Bronze. 1916 
Katherine S. Dreier Collection, New York 


Tanagra Motive. Bronze. 1916 


Group. Marble. 1920 


I—Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 
II—Stadel Museum, Frankfurt 


Group. Blaster. Aoz1 
Grey Torso. Tyrolese Marble. 1921 
Man. Bronze. 1921 


Woman Bending. Bronze. 1921 


I—Osaka Museum, Japan 
II—Staatsgalerie, Vienna 


Woman Standing. Bronze. 1921 
Booymans Museum, Rotterdam 


Red Statue. Artificial Stone. 1921 
Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 


Woman with Folded Arms. Bronze. 1921 
Black Statue. Artificial Stone. 1921 


21 Seated Woman. Marble. 1922 

22 Head. Marble. 1922 

23 The Bather. Bronze. 1923 

24 Seated Woman. Bronze. 1923 

25 Woman Reclining. Plaster. 1923 

26 Symmetric Torso. Marble. 1923 

27 Statuette. Mahogany. 1923 

28 Secretary of StateCharles Evans Hughes. Plaster. ve 
29 Senator Medill McCormick. Plaster. 1923 

30 Madame Archipenko. Plaster. 1923 


SCULPTO-PAINTINGS 


31 Still-life. Wood. 1915 
32 Leaving the Bath. Wood and Metal. 1915 
33, Before the Mirror. Wood and Metal. 1915 


‘34 Red Vase of Flowers on Table. Wood and Papier 
Mache. 1919 
35 Woman and Still-life. Wood and Papier Mache. 1919 


36 Woman. Various Metals. 1923 


Model of Decorative Panel for Metal Room 
Lent by the Société Anonyme 


PAINTINGS 


37 Portrait of Madame Archipenko. 1922 
38 The Bather. 1922 

39 Group I. 1923 

40 Group Be 1923 

41 Group III. 1923 


ETCHINGS AND DRAWINGS 


42 Etching I. 1920 
43 Etching II. 1920 
44-64 Drawings. 1918-1923 





Woman Standing. Bronze 
Booymans Museum, Rotterdam 





White Torso. Marble 


Nationalgalerie, Berlin 





Group. Marble 


I—Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 
II—Stadel Museum, Frankfurt 





Statuette. Terra-cotta 





Woman. Decorative Panel. 
Société Anonyme, New York 


* 
a 
x, a 
i 
\ er 
; | poh 
: 4 
5 i 
; | 
, 
é 
Designed and Printed by 
REDFIELD-KENDRICK-ODELL Co. 
; New York 





 Qe|-B 7285 jada? 





: ‘ r . ; ' 
' . h 9 2 
j : 
v 
* ‘ 
Ny 
\ 


Eat 
<i a : Taras eae eesanantaalsig a 
pene : Spach 


PIES ae 





